Monday, 5.19.08, 5:55 pm
Schumann, Incompetent Genius?
The old canard is that Schumann knew a thing or two about melodies, songs, and the piano, but when it came to orchestrating his ambitious symphonies, he was out of his depth. Admittedly he wasn’t a master orchestrator, simply for lack of experience and training. But as early as the 1950’s, as part of the Music Appreciation Series analyses, Leonard Bernstein felt compelled to defend Schumann against the happily parroted accusation of his alleged clunky and thick scoring. (It’s easier to answer the ‘clunky’ charge than that against the texture, which can be dense.) Schumann, played just right, can develop an inner glow – radiating from the strings and brass outward – that is unique and wonderful, whether he had intended it so or not.
The most obvious sign that Schumann must have known what he was doing is that his four symphonies became, with those of Brahms, the quintessential exponents of the Germanic, romantic symphony. Both composers take Beethoven as a starting point and go ‘inland’ with it. If there is a “German” symphonic style and sound, it’s those two that exemplify it – much more so than Schubert or Mendelssohn or the sui generis Bruckner. They have been staples in concert halls almost since Mendelssohn premiered the First Symphony with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester to great success on March 31st 1841. On record they have been oft and well served, with notable signposts in Szell’s Cleveland 1958/60 cycle on RCA/Heritage Masterworks and the 1972 EMI recordings of Wolfgang Sawallisch with the Dresden Staatskapelle that have since towered over the Schumann symphony discography.
In 2006/2007 Riccardo Chailly recorded all four symphonies with the band that premiered all but the Third “Rhenish” Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, for Decca. He seems to have achieved yet another triumph. Just like his recording of the Brahms Piano Concertos with Nelson Freire broke through the Szell/Fleisher and Jochum/Gilels perceived duopoly, his Schumann, too, is now seated – along Barenboim’s fabulous Berlin set – with Sawallisch at his right hand, and Szell on the left. The kicker to his recording: He conducts the Mahler edition of Schumann’s symphonies.
This is notable for several reasons. For one, Mahler’s revisions (re-orchestrations, editions, retouchings – whatever you wish to call them) of other composer’s symphonies (Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann) are rarely recorded or played – and when they are, usually it’s a bit of a gimmick. When Mahler’s editions are played, then usually by less known artists and orchestras that wish to direct attention their way by doing something (gratuitously?) different. For a conductor of the stature of Chailly with the Gewandhausorchester, easily one of the world’s best, not only to play Schumann-cum-Mahler, but to be universally hailed for it by the press, is rare and might be surprising. Except – and this brings us back to Schumann’s reputation as an orchestrator – that we are dealing with Schumann here. Because if you do it to Schumann, it’s “OK”. Beethoven, not – that would be sacrilege.
I don’t actually wish to indicate that it should ‘also not be “OK”’ to play revised versions of Schumann symphonies, just like it isn’t typically well received when Beethoven is ‘messed with’. Rather, the praise for Chailly’s Schumann (and it really is Schumann, not some odd Rhenish-Resurrection hybrid) shows how these revisions aren’t that big a deal and that the score need not be considered quite as sacrosanct as critics – then and now – are wont to demand.
The Mahler edition – not only of Schumann but Beethoven as well – also unveils a hint of hypocrisy in those who blare loudest about ‘devotion to the text’. While the “Mahler Edition” Schumann Symphonies have a printed and countable 2016 revisions from the Urtext that Mahler knew, most of them concern dynamics. It still sounds like a lot, but the truth is: No score comes with the composer’s imprimatur printed on the title page, and no conductor works without a pencil in rehearsal. When Mahler revised the symphonies of others he did so as a conductor who happened to know how to compose and how to execute a musical idea so that it came across in reality that got to work. And every conductor makes a myriad of dynamic markings to the text in front of them, doubles winds if necessary, or even supplies notes that the music indicates but that instruments of the time couldn’t play. Except that these are not called the “Kleiber Edition” or the “Furtwängler Edition” of Beethoven’s Fifth or Schumann’s Third, they remain Beethoven’s Fifth and Schumann’s Third and the only focus of the comments and criticism will be on the interpretation, not textual felicity.
To be sure, the differences between Schumann’s (or Beethoven’s) symphonies in Mahler’s edition are greater than would be with most any other conductor’s performing version. But it is far smaller a difference than between the hoopla that is being made off them and how naturally we accept that in the very act of interpreting (pace those conductors who claim to be mere executants and conduits) a piece of music will undergo innumerable, largely minute, changes.
The reason why I don’t find the Beethoven-Mahler editions particularly interesting, much less necessary, is that Beethoven can be – and is – played extraordinarily well without them. Where big romantic orchestras demand the doubling of winds, for example, conductors don’t need Mahler to double them. And where they are played by orchestras roughly the size of what Beethoven might have had available, it isn’t necessary to revise them. And a few adjusted – not then possible but desired – notes in the brass, flutes, or timpani don’t make a big difference one way or the other. Mahler’s intention wasn’t, in any case, to ‘help’ Beethoven, but to adjust for balances that had become skewed over the years. A legitimate worry, but not one that is very acute today.
With Schumann’s Symphonies, the matter is a little different. Mahler didn’t adjust the score to resemble new, different realities of the orchestras that would play his music, he genuinely tried to help and edit Schumann. Not because Schumann was inept, but because he had never had the benefit of a good editor or the extensive performance and composing experience to hone in on the details. And while his work can sound great just as it is (assuming a conductor who knows how to avoid certain pitfalls and retain enough clarity), the Mahler version sounds great too – and arguably better.
Very broadly stated, the difference is one of texture and dynamics. Schumann-Mahler sounds slightly lighter, less brass-heavy, with a greater variety of color, and greater delineation of the individual voices. Individual elements emerge more easily from the symphonic mass, the parts that make up the whole become more prominent. Exaggerated: It’s a move from hearty stew to nouvelle cuisine. On the dynamic end the works become more overtly romantic – there is now a pulling and pushing that can be restless, and generally produces a greater thrust. Nuances and contrasts are worked out in greater relief. In a way, the Mahler edition has a built-in Furtwänglerization.
The most notable change might be the first notes of the First Symphony. Why is the horn and trumpet fanfare a third lower than Schumann wrote it? Not a gratuitous Mahlerism, as it turns out, but concern about original intent. Schumann wrote it that way. Then he found out that the then still valveless horns couldn’t play it without hand-stopping the G and A. Schumann didn’t want a muted sound for the opening fanfare, so he followed the suggestion of the symphony’s first conductor, Mendelssohn, in transposing the two-partite phrase up a third.
Mahler reverts to Schumann’s known original intent. And lo and behold: the transition to the transition to the string’s swooping entry sounds more natural. This is not only the first difference from the original in this edition, and one of the more notable ones, it’s also indicative of the intent, scrutiny, and care that Mahler – who was proud of this achievement and wanted it published after his death – took with Schumann’s work. Rather than imposing himself on the helpless composer, he tries to make the many extant qualities of the symphonies (even in the scoring) stand out more. Also notable: Exposition repeats are now officially cut – but again, that’s a decision most conductors didn’t need Mahler to tell them to do.
Chailly could have recorded excellent Schumann in any edition – especially with as wonderful sounding an orchestra as the Gewandhaus, one of the few orchestras that still preserves a distinctive romantic, European sound. That he uses the Mahler edition is not a gimmick of his; it goes rather to his credit to offer us something slightly different and not to have done it merely to be different. His recording is the best proof that the justification for Mahler’s revisions lie in how good the results sound. To find out the exact differences, all but the most seasoned Schumann enthusiasts would need a score. But the lively, nuance-rich, unapologetically romantic nature of these symphonies comes through to everyone who will listen.
Chailly was not the first conductor to record the Schumann symphonies in this edition. Aldo Ceccato and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra have done that in the early nineties for the BIS label. Volume one and two are both very fine, and I have long enjoyed them as alternatives to my other Schumann. But the Bergen PO isn’t the Leipzig Orchestra, and Chailly coaxes so much out of his players and the compositions that his is not just an alternative recording to “real” Schumann recordings, it sets new standards for all of them. Incidentally Ceccato plays the symphonies as if infused with a Mahlerian spirit that’s not actually in the notes. He is much slower and broader than the dynamic, lively, ever vital and explosive Chailly. And, pace Ceccato, for slow Schumann I have a new favorite.
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I’ve had the pleasure to hear much Schumann lately – on record and in concert. The Mahler editions (recorded by Chailly), the original version of the Fourth Symphony (championed by Brahms, recorded by Thomas Zehetmair and the Northern Sinfonia, performed by Kent Nagano and the Bavarian State Orchestra), the unadulterated version of the Fourth (Christian Thielemann / Munich Philharmonic), the Piano Concert (Nagano, Lars Vogt), the Manfred Overture, Herrmann & Dorothea Overture, and the Requiem (all Thielemann), and the Second Symphony (in concert with Thomas Hengelbrock / MPhil and on CD, together with the First, under Lawrence Foster / Pentatone).
Interspersed with articles and reviews of music of Brahms, I will write about some of these Schumann recordings and performances leading up to Robert’s 198th birthday on June 8th.
For Schumann in the DC region you may look to the National Orchestral Institute under Andrew Litton (!) which will offer the First Symphony at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on June 28th. (Open rehearsal the day before and free of charge.) Joel Lazar and the JCC Symphony Orchestra (Rockville) will perform the Piano Concerto with Alon Goldstein on June 5th. Next Season – in January and February of 2009 – Shriver Hall will present first Ingrid Fliter then Radu Lupu (!) in recitals that will both include Schumann.